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 The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud Most people know of the Solar System as eight planets that rotate and revolve around our Sun. This vision would be incomplete. There is much more out there than the eye can see. For example, there are two special places called the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. The Kuiper Belt was first conjectured in the 1940’s and 1950’s by Gerard Kuiper and Kenneth Edgeworth, and it was proven to exist in the 1990’s. The Oort Cloud was thought of by Jan Oort and it is still a theory. WHAT IS THE KUIPER BELT? The Kuiper Belt was first hypothesized when the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of some unknown dwarf planets. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, two scientists, Gerard Kuiper and Kenneth Edgeworth, fought hard for this hypothetical home for short period comets, or large chunks of rock and ice that would become comets if they approached our sun. The Kuiper Belt was finally accepted when the telescope brought back more pictures in the 90’s. Since then, over one thousand Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO’s) were located in the outer reaches of our solar system, including 1992QB1, which is still one of the largest KBO’s today. One of the major dilemmas involving the Kuiper Belt is Pluto. Discovered in 1930, it was immediately labeled as a planet. In 2006, this changed, when laws came out defining a planet. There are four rules that all planets must follow. First, they have to be spherical. Pluto is a sphere. Then they have to orbit a star. Pluto orbits the Sun. They have to have enough mass to have their own gravity, which Pluto has. Then they have to clear their orbit. Pluto collides in the orbit of Neptune, and sometimes hits other Kuiper Belt objects. Because of this, Pluto became a dwarf planet, like many of the other objects in the Kuiper Belt. HOW IT WAS DISCOVERED As you know, the Kuiper Belt was discovered from images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, proven when they found 1992QB1. Gerard Kuiper’s proposal seemed remarkable and obscene, but he kept pushing the idea, even with so little proof. To find Pluto, telescopes found a small “planet” past Neptune. A similar thing happened with the Kuiper Belt. The Telescope brought back images of comets and dwarf planets orbiting our sun, far, far away. PHYSICAL APEARANCE The Kuiper belt has yet to be seen clearly, though NASA satellite, New Horizons was launched January 19, 2006 to visit Neptune, Pluto and what lies beyond. By what is known of Pluto’s orbit, as well as that of other comets and dwarf planets, it is thought that the Kuiper Belt is shaped like a disk, and has an elliptical orbit, about 102 through 103 Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Inside this area, now known as the Kuiper Belt, is our Heliopause, or determined place where space objects stop being affected by our Sun’s gravity. WHAT IS THE OORT CLOUD? The Oort cloud is a hypothetical home for long term comets, or chunks of rock and ice that take more than two hundred years to orbit our sun without becoming actual comets. It is thought to contain more than one trillion inactive comets. The Oort Cloud theory has not yet been confirmed, though Jan Oort proposed 3 strong pieces of evidence. First of all, there are comets revolving around the Sun. Second, they all start at the same distance from the Sun, meaning that it is possible that there is a large amount of comets in one place. Last, when the comets are flung into our Solar System, they come from all different directions equally, as though there was a large, spherical cloud surrounding our Solar System. DISCOVERY OF OORT CLOUD, PHYSICAL, AND FUTURE The Oort Coud is simply the hypothesis of Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort. Using the evidences listed above, Oort created a simple map of our solar system as seen below. This only shows the order of what may be our Solar System. Scientists don’t know exactly how the Oort Cloud might look, but we do know that what may be its comets come evenly from all directions. This means that if the Oort Cloud exists, it is a sphere surrounding our Solar System. After New Horizons visits the Kuiper Belt, it will go to the Oort Cloud to see if Jan Oorts theory is true. HOW THE OORT CLOUD AFFECTS EARTH Maybe you have heard that about every 30 million years there is a Great Extinction. If you weren’t aware, you probably knew that the dinosaurs died because of a meteor that crashed into Earth. First it killed the plants, which starved the herbivores. When they died, the omnivores had nothing left to eat, and then there was nothing for the carnivores. Scientists recently theorized that this could be caused by our hypothetical home for long term comets. The theory is that the galactic disk tides, caused by the motion of our spiral galaxy, change the comet flux and cause comets to enter our Solar System. Every thirty million years, we are hit by comets and meteors, which may cause more Great Extinctions. THEORY The theory of why the Oort Cloud exists is that the very same planetesimals that formed our Earth, as well as the other planets in our solar system, were then pushed out by the Sun’s gravity and the gravity of the planets. Eventually they got to be 104 Astronomical Units away. At that point, they began to revolve around our sun in a massive elliptical orbit, much like that of the Kuiper Belt. Therefore, the Oort Cloud is a home for comets that were not thrown all the way out of the solar system. As you now know, The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud are very important for our Solar System. It is so important that New Horizons is going out of its way to arrive in 2015 to see the Kuiper Belt. Maybe it will prove the existence of the Oort Cloud. All this proves that the Solar System has hidden bits and pieces. Some are still concealed, but as technology advances, so does our knowledge.  Bibliography  "Astronomy Unit Part IV Outer Solar System." //TeacherTube//. 18 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Dec. 2010.  Baker, David, and Todd Ratcliff. "The Oort Cloud: Billions and Billions of Bodies." //The 50 Most Extreme Places in Our Solar System//. Cambridge, Mass [ets.: Belknap, 2010. 106-09. Print.  Howard, Fran. //The Kuiper Belt//. Edina, MN: ABDO Pub., 2008. Print. "The Kuiper Belt and The Oort Cloud." //Synaptic Systems Inc. — Pursuing Innovative Excellence//. Web. 21 Dec. 2010. . Trujillo, Chadwick A. "Kuiper belt." //World Book Advanced//. World Book, 2010. Web. 21 Dec. 2010. "Perturbing the Oort Cloud » American Scientist." //American Scientist Online//. Web. 21 Dec. 2010. [] __New Frontiers: Modern Perspectives on our Solar System.__ Frank Summers. DVD. The Teaching Company, 2008